The fire trapped inside the polished metal was another illusion. The same as when his skin brightened with a pink flush he did not truly feel.
Unnatural.
He shivered, and saw Ros-Crana flinch her gaze away.
“Of course,” the storyteller continued, “Conan would not allow any Cimmerian, no warriors of Crom, to be taken by Vanir slavers. Even ones who had spurned his company. For a night and a day, he followed, chewing on carrion left behind at a raider camp, running without rest, and finally catching them in the foothills below tall, white-capped mountains.”
A tale that began to sound familiar to Kern, who shifted in his place. A Callaughnan clansman staggered over with his large hands cradling half a dozen fresh tankards, which he handed out at random. Kern drove the broken spear into the ground next to him, point first, and grabbed for one of the large metal cups.
He took a long pull at the bitter ale, washing a sour taste out of his mouth.
“Against so many Vanir, Conan worried he could not stand. So he tricked them by tying torches into the tops of some saplings, setting them blazing and bobbing to look like a line of men on the path.
“Then he crept back to the raider camp and waited for half of the warriors to leave, thinking they had found some new game to hunt. Slipping in through the shadows, Conan freed first one slave, then another, arming them with daggers and clubs and rocks, and setting them at the raiders who had imprisoned them while he hunted down the great Ymirish who led the Vanir.”
Very, very familiar. And not at all believable as told when one knew that Conan had been made king of Aquilonia years before the Ymirish first showed themselves among the northern raiders of Vanaheim. Tied to a throne, it was unlikely the great Cimmerian warrior would ever return to his native land. And less likely he would be received any better . . . any better . . .
Any better than Kern and his outcasts were often treated. Once outside the clan, always outside. That was law.
And this was actually Kern’s story. How he had chased a Vanir party toward the Snowy River passes after being cast out of his village clan of Gaud, and rescued friends and village kin. Though certainly not alone. Reave had been there. Desa and Aodh and Wallach Graybeard. Ehmish had been the one to carry a stack of flaming brands along a distant path to draw out the raiders.
But Conan rarely needed help. Such had been the legend of the unlikely hero ever since he left a devastated Clan Conarch and began his travels as an outcast, a thief, a warrior, and, eventually, a king.
Because Kern knew the gist of the tale—had lived through it, after all—he hunkered down and studied those faces he saw were listening. Not all believed the story, of course. Some—like Nahud’r, like Ros-Crana—knew the truth. Others simply shook their heads at yet another implausible tale. In fact, the name of Conan was still frowned upon by many Cimmerians. They might marvel at his exploits—his feats of strength and cunning—but the truths always remained he had left his people, his land, and traveled for too long among “civilized” men. There were those who even challenged that “King” Conan had tried to enforce his own will upon Cimmeria, stationing garrisons in the southern reaches, then abandoned his people when they needed him most by withdrawing most of that occupying army just when the Vanir threat loomed largest.
First he is outcast for leaving to avenge his people. An invader for thinking to settle peace on southern Cimmeria. And then a coward and a traitor for freeing the same lands that had chafed under his attempted authority.
Cimmerian judgment was harsh, even in the best of times.
But there were enough who appreciated the tale for its own sake that the storyteller was encouraged to continue. Warriors who beat a fist against their own chests, in salute. And the Aquilonian soldiers, who knew Conan as their king and hung on every word as if hearing it from Conan’s own lips.
“Conan found the great warrior, the Ymirish, having roped the chieftain’s daughter to a strong watchtower tree where the frost-maned beast intended to ravage her. With a great, savage yell he rushed the great northerner with greatsword flashing in the moonlight.
“Back and forth they battled, and Conan bled over the frozen snows as he was finally knocked back into the same tree as the chieftain’s daughter, his lover”—Kern steeled himself against any reaction—“where he barely managed to block a lethal swipe that would have ripped open his own throat and taken his head as a Vanir trophy.”
Which Kern knew had been the point at which he’d had no strength left. No reason to hope to survive. Trapped against the tree, his own sword pinned between their bodies and only a single hand on the Ymirish’s arm to hold back that final blow.
“With a final heave, Conan threw back the Vanir. He dug the tip of his greatsword through the raider leader’s belly, spilling the northerner’s guts, which fell out onto the ground. Not steaming warm as a normal man’s would be. They were frozen. A great block of ice.”
A nice touch.
“The Ymirish staggered forward, and fell. And Conan took the chieftain’s daughter back to her people.”
There were a few hearty cheers, but more simple grunts by those less enthralled as the tale finally ended. A few men toasted the victory silently, raising their tankards and downing the last of their ale in mighty draughts.
Kern swallowed more of the bitter ale himself.
Then he nearly choked it up as Nahud’r leaned forward over the fire. “That not quite how it happen,” the Shemite said in broken Aquilonian, a language most Cimmerians recognized well enough. His eyes shone brightly out of a dark-skinned face. His teeth were large and his grin a savage white.
No, it hadn’t happened exactly that way. It completely brushed aside the pain and suffering Maev, Burok Bear-slayer’s daughter, had known under the hands of the Ymirish. And the fact that Kern would have died alongside her if Daol hadn’t tracked after them and fired a trio of arrows into the warrior’s back.
Cleverly fired a trio of arrows, Daol would say.
Even so, he had no desire for Nahud’r—who had been one of the rescued slaves—to set the storyteller straight. Maev’s shame did not need to be detailed, nor his own weakness. Nor anything that had passed between the two of them in the nights after. Let them add this tale into the legends of Conan, and welcome.
But Nahud’r’s ebony skin and odd dress were a draw all to themselves. A nomad from the fabled southern deserts of Shem, who later had been educated in Aquilonia, there wasn’t much about the man that was not unusual. When the Shemite spoke, he always gathered an audience.
“Then how?” the storyteller asked, frowning heavily.
Kern should not have been worried. His friend did not mean to put him into an awkward spot. Nahud’r shrugged, and settled back. “Conan. He spin around this . . . Ymirish. After ice, it fall out from belly. Drive his sword through back of other warrior, and pin him to tree. Still alive. Free daughter, and she . . .” Here the words failed Nahud’r, so he simply made a slashing gesture across his own lap. Most every man around the fire winced and not a few of the women laughed hard and hungry for more. He shrugged again.
“They leave him there to die in snow. Painful.”
The storyteller liked the addition, and nodded. “Could be,” he admitted. “I only know as much as I heard.”
One warrior clapped Nahud’r roughly on the back, and another pressed a tankard of ale on him, which the Shemite accepted but passed on to the next man in line without drinking. For a moment, a warming blanket of camaraderie fell over the rough council, with clansmen laughing and making more than a few crude references to the Ymirish’s loss of manhood. It was as if untold numbers of Cimmerians had not died over the winter, and another hundred or more in the fighting to throw off Grimnir’s chokehold on the northwest territory. A fireside celebration to welcome a good hunt, a good battle, or even the rise of a new chieftain.
To celebrate simply being alive, Kern decided. Even though the battle was not won yet. Only the first skirmish.
> Another of Kern’s men also had that same general feeling, as it turned out.
“Seems we could use Conan—and more men like him—about now,” Mogh said, speaking up from the outskirts of the gathering. He had the Callaughnan woman wrapped up in an embrace from behind, hands around her waist and head bent over to her left shoulder. But now he straightened, gathering her in at his side even though she shifted uncomfortably to be the sudden attention of a full third of the lodge.
Rudely spoken, certainly. But honest. Kern watched as Ros-Crana’s guards and a few nearby Callaughnan considered Mogh’s words, chewing them over with a sour expression, as if they’d bitten into spoiled meat.
“You think more of the Ymirish should be treated so?” Ros-Crana asked after a sharp glance in Kern’s direction.
Blaming him for the outburst? As if he’d planned for it? But Kern could not have planned for the second show of support.
“If he does not think it, he should. We all should.”
A voice Kern recognized, rising up from the warrior sitting cross-legged in front of him. Deep and strong, despite the bandaged face that made him look so weakened, Gard Foehammer was not to be confused with anyone else Kern had ever met. A confident warrior, protector of Clan Cruaidh . . .
And blinded, by foul sorceries in the battle against Grimnir’s war host. It surprised Kern that the once-proud warrior had been abandoned by Sláine Longtooth. Was now living on the mercy of Clan Callaugh.
“We should be wishing that kind of end on all Vanir who raid into Cimmeria. On Grimnir the Terror, himself!” Gard rocked forward, coming up into a crouch as he leaned first to the left, then back around to those on his right. His hidden gaze caused a few to glance away. “Wherever that creature of Ymir has holed up, you can be certain he is not feasting or telling stories around his fires. He is building up strength. He will not forget the defeat we handed him on the plateaus above Conarch.”
A younger man, barely more than a youth and reminding Kern very much of Ehmish, scoffed. “Let him remember. And when he comes, we do it to him again!”
Kern doubted the younger warrior had been a part of that last, desperate stand.
Most of Ros-Crana’s men had been, though. “I saw Grimnir take a blade through the heart,” one of them said. “By Crom, I swear the creature took wounds would have killed any three men. And he went over that cliff, at the end, and still he survives.”
“How do you fight such thing?” another asked.
More spoke up, arguing about what they had seen, or thought to see, or what the clans should do about it next. There were not a few suspicious glances shot at Kern, who had gone over that cliff face as well, pulling the giant-kin war leader with him, ready to take the frost-born northerner with him into death.
But the Cimmerian had caught a ledge partway down, and lived. Battered and bloodied, and with a great deal of skin scraped away from his hide, but nothing broken. The blind chance of fortune.
“I saw it,” one of the Aquilonian horsemen said, raising his voice to be heard above the din. He spoke well in Cimmerian. “I saw it pull the sword from its chest.”
Kern remembered the man, who had fallen from his horse in the thick of the fighting and whom he had helped rescue. The Aquilonian wore the same chain-mail shirt he’d worn in battle, but without his helm. His sandy-brown hair hung in tight ringlets over his ears. His eyes, muddy green like pond water, were quick and alive.
“I also saw Grimnir raging in pain. I saw the monster bleed!” His words calmed most of the rest of the arguing. The Aquilonian looked to Ros-Crana, then to Kern, holding his gaze steady.
“If it bleeds, it can be killed.”
Kern toasted the Aquilonian, tipping his tankard at him, then slugged down several bitter gulps. The ale stung at the back of his throat and filled his nose with the scent of fermented barley. It left a cloudy taste on his tongue, the only help for which was another draught.
Ros-Crana caught him in the middle of his second pull.
“You have been quiet, Kern Wolf-Eye.” Her eyes flashed dangerously. “You battled Grimnir to a standstill on the high bluff. You are the only warrior I know to have come against the Terror, and lived. A Ymirish not of Grimnir’s host.” She was doing Kern no favors, pointing out the oddness which followed him. Which told in his pale skin and dead-frost hair and the gold, wolflike eyes he shared with other Ymirish. And with Grimnir. “You do not call for Grimnir’s death?”
“I called for it, yea. Weeks ago. And I hunted his trail, losing it to the south.” South . . . not north. “Since then, I have had wounded warriors to consider. But now they are better.”
“And so? What will you do?”
She had quickly and effectively isolated Kern from most of the clansmen, reminding everyone of his differences as well as his victories. And as a chieftain, she could hardly be expected to follow an outcast. Even the youngest man or woman in Callaugh held more standing at lodge than he.
His anger returned, that Ros-Crana refused to recognize the need for what had to be done. Just as T’hule Chieftain of Conarch—as many of the western clans—did. Why did Clan chieftains so often treat him as a threat? He was not the one leading war hosts into Cimmeria!
He shrugged, belying the warm rage building inside him.
“What I promised,” he said. He grabbed the broken spear with one large fist, thrust it out at Ros-Crana as if offering it to her again. But he was not. “I will carry the spear to other clans. And hope they recognize the dangers we still face.” They must. Bearing a spear to the many chieftains should bring them. It was tradition, and carried the force of any outside law.
“The spear must be sent by a chief or war leader.” It was Gard Foehammer who cautioned him this time, twisting about, searching for Kern through the cloth bandages wrapped over his eyes. The blisters that Ymirish sorceries had raised on his face had retreated, leaving pale, white scars like frosted tears on his cheeks, his brow.
“Who will you carry the spear from?” he asked.
A good question. Sláine Longtooth had departed back for Conall Valley and the fortress village of Cruaidh. Narach Chieftain was dead and Ros-Crana indecisive. And T’hule Chieftain of Conarch . . . he wanted less to do with Kern and the other outcasts than most anyone else.
Suspicious of each other, relieved that the Vanir war host had been shattered, the leaders had all fallen back on their own problems, their own needs.
“I will carry it from the first chieftain to step forward and lead,” Kern promised, casting the dregs of his ale into the snapping flames. There was a savage hiss from the fire, and many dark looks from those seated around it as he toed a very thin line, close to insulting Ros-Crana as Callaugh’s chieftain and war leader.
He stood, and, across the way, Nahud’r rose as well. Mogh he felt move up behind him, immediately guarding his back. Dropping his tankard on the floor where he’d sat, hearing its hollow, metal ringing, he released himself from Ros-Crana’s hospitality.
Her protection.
Then Reave was at his side, with a hank of venison in one hand and his other one on Kern’s shoulder in a direct show of support. Desagrena and Daol shouldered over near Nahud’r. No one had drawn a weapon. Kern doubted anyone would. But his people had learned to safeguard each other’s back first and worry about the forms of tradition last.
It was the way of outcasts.
“Strength to you and your clan, Ros-Crana Chieftain.” Kern nodded curtly, once. Then he stepped back from the fire, drawing his pack of warriors after him, around him, like wolves protecting their leader.
“Kern? Kern! WOLF-EYE!” Ros-Crana’s voice cracked like a whip.
Kern waited, looked back. She stood over her bench, face flushed red in anger and a dangerous gleam in her twilight eyes. But finally she came to him, pushing one of her guards back with a quick shove and glaring her way past Reave and Nahud’r, who both backed off a full step.
Tall and strong, she looked every stone’s weight a chieft
ain and a leader of warriors. There was no doubt or hesitation in her face. No weakness in her voice, though she approached him with nothing more than a whisper as half of the lodge watched the confrontation. Hands slipped to sword hilts and daggers.
“Leave off, Kern. Do not attempt this. We have the spring, perhaps part of summer, to heal. And there is Clan Conarch to worry for. They are heavily weakened, and there is no more dangerous clan than one that is vulnerable.”
Was that what truly stayed Ros-Crana’s hand? Pushed against a wall, did she look north and see a threat equal to Grimnir? Or an opportunity?
“Grimnir pushed south with the core of his army,” he reminded her. “South. That is not the retreat of a defeated leader. He will return sooner than you think. I mean to discover what he is about and to put myself in his path.”
“He will destroy you.”
“Mayhap,” Kern admitted.
“Fool. To throw yourself into the jaws of the beast is not courage, Wolf-Eye. It is madness. And rage.”
He counted his warriors, saw them all drawing close now, protecting his path back to the lodge entrance. Kern swallowed dryly, knowing that his next step would be the first on another long path with little rest or relief. And he took it. Moving away from Ros-Crana and her last-minute entreaty. Madness. And rage.
“That,” he said, “may be all we have left.”
5
BITTER RAINS SLASHED at the lower slopes of Ben Morgh this night, filling streambeds and cutting new, muddy sluices between the broken hovels of the Tunog village. Here, the rains splashed in a hard rhythm against thatched roofs, or slapped at the walls, running down overlapping skins of thick bark. There, the icy droplets popped and sizzled across a soupy mixture of water and earth, sounding oddly like meat crisping over a fire.
And, in other places, the rain splashed into unblinking eyes and pooled in the open mouths of corpses left to rot in the muck and mud.
Cimmerian Rage Page 5
